If they can exhaust all their firepower in a couple weeks fighting Iran, China would have no reason to feel threatened in the first place.

The reality is that fighting China would be a proper all-out war, not whatever this spitting match with Iran is.

As much as I support Taiwan, there's no realistic timeline where the US goes to war against the PRC over Taiwan. None.

Hey look on the bright side - every time we cut CDC staff by 25% or kick a 100K people off SNAP, we can afford a few more weeks of missiles.

I imagine elements in the Taiwanese govt are pushing a massive drone network to turn the nation into a porcupine.

On the flip side, at least the press is not hammering the Epstein files and the lack of any prosecution for the crimes documented in those.

LBH US hasn't been in position to defend 1st island chain in a while, US performance vs Iran just made that obvious.

The one thing we have learned in recent wars is highend hardware can shoot down subsonic munitions reliably, highend missiles can penetrate high end defense reliably. AKA PRC is uniquely positioned to blunt most of US fires (subsonic munitions) while having tons of highend fires vs US defense. But really PRC doesn't even need highend fires for TW scenario, see their subsonic cruse missile / drone gigafactory (like proper not ghetto tier) that can churn 1000s per day, i.e. even with pure subsonics PRC can fully saturate entire US posture/basing structure in 1IC/2IC.

US in westpac has been thoroughly functionally cooked for years. It just took Iran performance for sensible people to realize how cooked. Not just how not up to task i.e. force balance, but how US tech stack uniquely vulnerable to PRC, who TBF has spend past 10 years of modernization strictly on this issue. NVM PRC can now conventionally hit CONUS as recognized by recent Pentagon China Power report, something PLA watchers have known for years, meanwhile said report still assumes PRC highend missile stockpiles is about size of Irans which is kek territory if not delulu.

TLDR people should stop hopiuming about PRC and evaluate consequences of commodity precision fire for mid tier operators. What Iran can do today, most of Americans can do in 10-15 years, i.e. we are entering a world where CONUS is vulnerable due to tech again (remember US project almost extinguished to wooden British boats). CONUS isolation/security as much man made as god/geographic given. It relies on US expeditionary model containing everyone ability to project fires to their shores. Once that's done, entire US defense model post war breaks. All of which is to say, forget Iran, anticipate Monroe wars in the future.

The USA will not really defend Taiwan anyway. Perhaps they may send some ships or airplanes but even that attempt at show of force will quickly collapse when Beijing increases pressure.

The only thing Beijing can not control is what Taiwan does and invading an island is always difficult. Also Taiwan needs a nuclear arsenal just as Israel has; Japan too, Canada and the EU as well. The days where the big countries abuse the smaller ones are over - we all can see this past the point of Putin starting his genocide against Ukraine. His next step of escalation will be mass mobilization; that's why his propaganda department already now calls the "special military operation" (which it never was) a war (which it always was from the get-go, but now he wants to send more of his slaves to die for him and his oligarch-bros).

If you look at Taiwan history when the US gave PRC the UN seat and Nixon visited Beijing it was pretty much decided.

Taiwan is no West Berlin and everyone knows it.